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HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee — Due to the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. hotel industry is projected to report a 50.6% decline in revenue per available room (RevPAR) in 2020, according to a special forecast revision from STR and Tourism Economics.

“The industry was already set for a non-growth year, now throw in this ultimate ‘black swan’ event, and we’re set to see occupancy drop to an unprecedented low,” said Jan Freitag, STR’s senior VP of lodging insights. “Our historical database extends back to 1987, and the worst we have ever seen for absolute occupancy was 54.6% during the financial crisis in 2009. With roughly six of 10 rooms on average empty, already wavering pricing confidence will take a significant hit and drop ADR to a six-year low.”

STR’s latest monthly data (February) showed 55,734 hotels and 5,341,586 rooms in the U.S. Property closures are expected to lead to a 14.9% decline in room nights available for the year.

“Travel has come to a virtual standstill, but we expect the market to begin to regain its footing this summer,” said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics. “Once travel resumes, the combination of pent-up travel demand and federal aid will help fuel the recovery as we move into the latter part of this year and next year.”

A note to editors: All references to STR data and analysis should cite “STR” as the source. Please refrain from citing “STR, Inc.” “Smith Travel Research” or “STR Global” in sourcing as those names no longer fit within the STR brand.

About STR
STR provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for global hospitality sectors. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 15 countries with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, an international headquarters in London, and an Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. STR was acquired in October 2019 by CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. For more information, please visit str.com and costargroup.com.

About Tourism Economics
Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company, focuses on the intersection of the economy and travel sector, providing actionable insights to our clients. We provide our worldwide client base with direct access to the most comprehensive set of historic and forecast travel data available. And our team of specialist economists develops custom economic impact studies, policy analysis, and forecast models.

By  HNN Newswire

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Sitting high atop a hill in the 300 block of Virginia Avenue, right next to the historic Violet Bank Museum, you’ll find a truly unique tree that, in the words of one arborist, is hiding in plain sight.

Locals call it the ‘Cucumber Tree.’ Technically, it’s a Magnolia acuminate, native to the eastern United States, but very rare this side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“This is a remarkable, giant old tree,” said Joel Koci, an urban forestry expert for the Virginia Cooperative Extension. “I like to think it’s 300 years old and has seen an awful lot of history.”

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Wonderful stories were submitted about meeting their “special” partners. On May 5, two stories were selected, one from Jennifer C. Grandstaff, who lives with her husband and family in Prince George County, and Carolyn D. Wheeling, who actually submitted her LOVE story on her 53^rd wedding anniversary, April 18. She and her husband have always lived in Chesterfield County. Their special evening at Swift Creek Mill Theatre was on May 11.

The Grandstaffs have been together for 30 years, married for 20 years, having met when she was 12 and both were students in Petersburg Public Schools. Their dates took them to Walnut Mall, Pocahontas State Park, White Bank Park, anywhere that was on the river, and finally they went to Prom together in 1994. They became engaged in 1997 at Annabelle’s Restaurant in Petersburg and were married in Chesterfield County on April 10, 1999. When asked about their life together now, Mrs. Grandstaff said, we reside in the rural area of Prince George County to enjoy the night skies, croaking frogs and crickets in the spring and summer, and enjoy our countryside walks to see the farms fields, and cows”. She added, home is the Tri-cities and surrounding area and Home is definitely where our heart is”.

Mrs. Wheeling said, “our whole life has revolved around Jeff Davis Highway”. Her story began in spring 1965 when she was 17, coming down Jeff Davis Highway from her waitress job driving a 1964 VW Bug, and she saw a red Plymouth Barracuda with a huge antenna on the back. “The car got my attention. We both stopped at the red light and our eyes met for a brief moment and the light changed to green. We pretended to “drag race”, of course I had no chance to win, but he let me win and followed me home”. Her friends identified the guy who drove that red Barracuda and they had a date three weeks later and soon were dating regularly. He proposed at midnight at a party at a friend’s house off of Jeff Davis Highway and they were married 9 months later at a little church at Willis Road & Jeff Davis. They even had a business in Chester for 20 years and she said her parents’ home and his parents’ home were both off of Jeff Davis, and their current home is just off of Jeff Davis Highway.

Guess where Swift Creek Mill is? It is located at 17401 Jefferson Davis Highway, South Chesterfield, VA 23834! Isn’t LOVE grand!!!

Don’t miss Swift Creek Mill’s next play, Savannah Sipping Society, which will be such a fun play to see. It opens on June 1.

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It was Virginia’s biggest hoedown. First airing in 1946, the Old Dominion Barn Dancewas broadcast on Richmond’s WRVA radio as the city’s version of Nashville’s Grand Ol’ Opry. Hosted by pioneering femcee Mary “Sunshine Sue” Workman, the country music variety show lasted a little more than a decade, but its steel guitar-sweetened echoes still resonate.

“The Barn Dance had great entertainers, musicians, and vocalists,” remembers Cal Newman, 86, a fiddler who grew up listening to, and later performing as a backup musician on, the Saturday night performance. “A lot of legends used it as a stepping stone to greater things, like Chet Atkins, Mac Wiseman, Reno and Smiley … for some, it became a jumping off place to Nashville and stardom.”

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When Lori and Kirk Thibault decided to tap in to the state and local wine market, they did just that — tapped in, literally.

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Say hello to the Metro Richmond Zoo’s newest additions: two super-cute pygmy hippos, Corwin and Iris.

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The Park strives to share the stories of civilians, enslaved and common soldiers with all people as their stories are now part of the American experience, which belongs to all Americans. All summer long, visitors can share in the experiences in the museums, at four historic homes and in the Park with new devices from Orpheo. These devices provide audio and images on a five inch screen at over 80 locations throughout the 424-acre campus. Additional focus weekends will offer unique historical interpretation programs.

In 2017, the Park experimented by offer a $1 admission weekend which saw an over 1000% increase in attendance and engaged members of the local and regional communities who had never visited the Park. This served to break down economic and cultural barriers by allowing guests from all walks of life and backgrounds to explore the Park.

During last year’s $1 admission event, Park Executive Director Jerry Desmond spoke with one family of seven including four children ages 5-12. Desmond states, “Seeing my name tag, the father thanked me explaining that he had lived in Dinwiddie County all of this life. For the past 20 years he had driven by the Park every day on his way to work but had never stopped in because the admission price was too high. On a regular day it would have cost him over $75 to bring his family to the Park…on that day it only cost him $7.” No better example highlights the passion and reasoning behind the reduced summer admission days.

The $1 general admission does not apply to group or guided tours, which are required to book in advance and some special events require additional fees. Call (804) 861-2408 or visit www.pamplinpark.org for more information on summer activities and $1 admission days throughout the summer.

One of “Virginia’s Best Places to Visit” according to the Travel Channel, and designated as a National Historic Landmark, Pamplin Historical Park & The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier is a 424-acre Civil War campus located in Dinwiddie County, Virginia offering a combination of high-tech museums and hands-on experiences. The Park has four world-class museums and four antebellum homes. The Park is also the site of The Breakthrough Battlefield of April 2, 1865 and America’s premiere participatory experience, Civil War Adventure Camp. For more information, please call 804-861-2408 or visit www.pamplinpark.org.

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A lot of history resides behind the pink exterior of Martin’s Brandon Episcopal Church.

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Burnette’s father, “Pie Man” has been making and selling pies since the ’60s. After working in the family business and peddling his own pies at farmers markets, the son opened his store in Hopewell.

Burnette’s sells 27 varieties of pies, pound cakes and puddings. Besides the deliciously expected products like banana pudding, coconut meringue pie, sweet potato pie, banana nut bread and chocolate chess pie, you’ll find the delightfully unexpected – Jamaican fruit pie (pineapples, coconut and pecans), bean pie (navy beans, really!) and red velvet pound cake.

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It’s easy to imagine that someone might have chosen this secluded place to set up an illegal still long ago, but Three Brothers Distillery is perfectly legal, and what owner David Reavis is making here is nothing like moonshine.

“I wanted to make something different,” said Reavis, a North Carolina native and Navy veteran whose full-time job is teaching performance management and process improvement for the U.S. Army.

An experienced beermaker, Reavis spent more than three years researching the distillation of spirits, travelling around the country and studying the distilling industry and its history, in preparation for opening Three Brothers. “My goal is to bring back those awesome traditional big flavors” from the era before Prohibition, he said.

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“It is a great honor to recognize this year’s 828 nationally Accredited Main Street America programs for their outstanding work to transform downtown and neighborhood commercial districts,” says Patrice Frey, President & CEO of the National Main Street Center. “Main Streets are the heart of our communities, and the work they do to create quality public spaces, catalyze local entrepreneurship, and support downtown housing is more important than ever. Across the county, Main Street America programs truly strengthen the economic, social, and cultural fabric of their entire communities.”

The organization’s performance is annually evaluated by Virginia Main Street, which works in partnership with the National Main Street Center to identify the local programs that meet ten performance standards. Evaluation criteria determines the communities that are building comprehensive and sustainable revitalization efforts and include standards such as fostering strong public-private partnerships, securing an operating budget, tracking programmatic progress and actively preserving historic buildings.

The Hopewell Downtown Partnership has helped foster numerous public-private partnerships both at the state and local level to help redevelop Hopewell’s historic downtown district.  New businesses have begun to take root in revitalized storefronts and multiple properties have undergone significant rehabs totaling over $7 million in public and private investment downtown since the organization’s designation in 2011.

“Many traditional historic downtown communities were forgotten and left in neglect or even demolished to make way for shopping centers, strip malls, and suburbanization.  We now see a major shift back to downtowns becoming the epicenter for economic and social activity. Downtown Hopewell is primed to become a successful example of the Main Street Approach to downtown revitalization,” says Evan Kaufman, Executive Director of the Hopewell Downtown Partnership.

Main Street America has been helping revitalize older and historic commercial districts for more than 35 years. Today, it is a network of more than 1,000 neighborhoods and communities, rural and urban, who share both a commitment to place and to building stronger communities through preservation-based economic development. Since 1980, communities participating in the program have leveraged more than $71.35 billion in new public and private investment, generated 583,869 net new jobs and 131,974 net new businesses, and rehabilitated more than 267,800 buildings. Main Street America is a program of the nonprofit National Main Street Center, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

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Each membership level includes free Park admission for one or two years and several additional incentives that increase with the level of membership purchased. All receive the newsletter, a 10% discount in The Civil War Store and an invitation to the annual member’s party. The free admission also includes some special events held at the Park throughout the year such as on Memorial Day or Independence Day.

Additional levels include those for couples or family and The Charles Gould Regiment, The Boisseau Brigade, The Hart & Banks Division, The 1865 Society and The Pamplin Corps. These memberships are geared for multiple persons or corporate entities and are named after historical elements of the Park. Benefits increase at each level and can include behind the scenes tours and further discounts on programs like the Civil War Adventure Camp or in The Civil War Store. The highest levels also include complimentary gift memberships.

Those who would like to pay for memberships in person, at The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier, have the option of selecting an item from a variety of five gifts. This incentive is only available in person and benefits the local community and those visiting guests who will frequent the Park.

Anyone interested in more information on memberships and pricing can visit www.pamplinpark.org and click on the join/donate button. The page also has printable forms for joining and online payment options are available.

One of “Virginia’s Best Places to Visit” according to the Travel Channel, and designated as a National Historic Landmark, Pamplin Historical Park & The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier is a 424-acre Civil War campus located in Dinwiddie County, Virginia offering a combination of high-tech museums and hands-on experiences. The Park has four world-class museums and four antebellum homes. The Park is also the site of The Breakthrough Battlefield of April 2, 1865 and America’s premiere participatory experience, Civil War Adventure Camp. For more information, please call 804-861-2408 or visit www.pamplinpark.org.

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